ed, tabulated and fixed, a minimum of mercy, a maximum of
disaster. All else is heresy.

They have been told this so many times that they not only believe it,
just as Cecille Manners once believed, utterly, fervidly, but they
derive therefrom an ardent satisfaction. This might seem strange, but
it is stranger far that they never look about them, just for a moment,
at life itself--just for a moment, just long enough to wonder. But
they do not. They believe in and expect the worst, demand it indeed.
And so this story will not please them--no. Not at all in so far as it
chronicles the life of Felicity Brown.

But the other half, the half which has been wondering for quite a
while, just as Cecille came to wonder, may read it and approve.

[Illustration: He tore at them, mad with rage.]

Once it was considered adequate to combat wickedness with fear, but
methods change. It has come to seem wiser, if less orthodox, to urge
that heaven is fair instead of insisting first that hell is so foul.
And so perhaps it would be well for a change to bear less heavily upon
the wages of sin, and extol, just a little, the wages of virture. For
too constant insistence upon an evil thing is sure to breed doubt in
the mind of one who is in the habit of thinking at all. It did in
Cecille's. If it be so true, so inevitable, so frightful, surely it
should be self-evident now and then, instead of a mere matter of
report. And beautiful generalization, never anything but vague,
becomes noticeable after a time, questionable. The things of glory in
this world are not so tediously many that they will not bear once or
twice the telling. Why not refuse, for once, to blink the facts, even
though they may not be suitably sordid? Why not go into detail, once
in a while, if the prospect is as fair as they would have one fancy?

This story does, I hope. It would be honester that way.

* * * * * *

It is not easy to account for the intimacy which existed between those
two girls. It is doubtful if either of them could have done much to
account for it. Pressed for an explanation, Felicity Brown, it is
true, might have essayed an answer of sorts. "Oh, Cele's kind of a
nut," she might have declared, "but she's a good scout," or something
equally unsatisfactory. But Cecille, unless urged, quite likely
wouldn't have made any answer at all. Then, "I don't know," she would
have murmured. And in the face of such